Dr. James S. Holt
Federal Legislative Liaison, American Kennel Club
to the
National Animal Interest Alliance Conference: The Price We Pay
Washington, DC, March 29, 2004

    * Connecting the dots
    * The AWA and 'incrementalism'
    * Note
    * For more information

Good morning. It is a pleasure to be here representing the American Kennel Club at the National Animal Interest Alliance's national conference on animal and environmental extremism.

All of us at this conference have experienced the threat of animal rights activism and extremism in our own spheres of interest. Speakers preceding me have talked about the threat to hunting and fishing, the threat to the use of animals in biological research, and the threat to animal agriculture, among others. In the few minutes I have with you this morning, I'd like to talk about another target of the animal rights movement, and in some respects the most insidious of all – the threat to pet ownership.(1) In particular, I want to talk about two aspects of the animal rights threat to pet ownership. One is the importance of "connecting the dots" for ordinary pet owners so that they understand the larger picture and the long term objectives of the animal rights movement – what the animal rights view of the perfect world with respect to the relationship of humans and animals really looks like. The second is the animal right movement's process of incrementalism – the process of getting to their view of the perfect world in very small steps and one constituency at a time, even if it takes a very long time. And I want to talk about the federal Animal Welfare Act as one of the venues for this incrementalism.
Connecting the dots

Redefining man's relationship with dogs is probably the most difficult challenge the animal rights movement faces. The fact that the movement has taken it on at all is testimony to how serious the movement is – how totally committed to redefining the position of humans and animals in the world. For the vast majority of the population, who are not committed animal right activists, it is the very experience of keeping and interacting with our pets – the human-pet animal bond – which the animal rights movement exploits to secure popular and financial support for their cause. The challenge the animal rights movement faces in seeking to eliminate pet ownership is how to further their objective without alienating the people on whom they depend for support.

People who are less sophisticated about the animal rights movement than those in this room, which is to say 99.5 percent of the general population, are often amused or amazed when I tell them I am the federal lobbyist for the American Kennel Club (http://www.akc.org). The threshold question always is "But what do you do?" or "Who is opposed to the American Kennel Club"? When I start talking about the animal rights extremists, most people are totally unaware that pet ownership is one of their targets. Many people know of the animal rights opposition to fur and leather, many are aware of the opposition to hunting, or at least to certain forms of hunting, some know about the animal rights opposition to animal agriculture, or at least to veal, and a few know about the animal rights opposition to the use of animals in medical and biological research.

While many people are aware of these targets of the animal rights movement, most ordinary people do not feel immediately threatened by the extremists, because research, agriculture and even hunting and fur are things that are removed from the daily experience of most people. But the general population is almost totally unaware of the animal rights opposition to pet ownership. Even many dog owners, fanciers and breeders don't understand the animal rights movement's position on pet ownership. If they have any awareness about it at all, they assume the opposition is to 'puppy mills' or dog fighting or animal cruelty. Most pet owners, and even many members of the purebred dog fancy, assume that the organizations we know as the animal rights movement are made up of animal lovers more or less just like them, albeit perhaps a bit more zealous. They are shocked to learn that the radical animal rights movement opposes the mere keeping of a pet as "animal fascism." Most of my purebred dog colleagues have never heard the term natural dog – the term animal rights activists use to refer to what we call mutts, and their dismissal of purebred dogs as "unnatural" dogs.

The reality, as all of you in this room are aware, is that the bulk of the financial support for the animal rights movement comes from common ordinary pet owners – people who love their animals, people for whom the human-animal bond is a central and fulfilling part of their lives, and people who still naively believe that animal rights organizations are really just animal welfare or humane organizations, whose members get a bit carried away with the idea at times. They believe that by supporting these organizations they are furthering the values they themselves hold. They wouldn't dream that they, the people from whom the animal rights movement derives its financial and political support, are among the animal rights movement's primary targets. It is a testimony to the strategic cunning, as well as the hypocrisy, of the animal rights movement, that the movement is willing and able to raise most of its money from the very people whose rights they are trying to abridge!

One of the greatest challenges we all face is the task of unmasking the true agenda of the animal rights movement. It's not enough to talk only about the issues in our own sphere of interest, whether it be fur, hunting, veal, vivisection or whatever. While we talk about these issues, it is important that we also relate them to the overall animal rights agenda. We all need to be engaged in the crusade to educate the public that the animal rights movement is not about a world where all animals are treated kindly and humanely, the way their donors treat their own pets, but about a world where there is no relationship between humans and animals except possibly coexistence. (And if Ingrid Newkirk's outlook that she regrets taking up the air, water, food and space that might otherwise go to an animal were to prevail, maybe not even coexistence.)

We should all be sobered, and I believe we are, by the fact that the animal rights movement has been able to raise up to $100,000,000 or more annually, by the estimates we have heard at this conference, largely from the very people they are seeking to do in, without most of their donors/targets realizing what is going on. One of the reasons they have been able to do that is because they have been, for the most part, masters of the process which I call "incrementalism". For the most part they have learned to be patient and take very small steps, sometimes exploiting genuine problems and sometimes exploiting opportunities that circumstance drops in their lap, to make small gains and establish new public policy precedents which can be exploited and expanded over time.
The AWA and 'incrementalism'

One of the best examples both of exploiting opportunities and incrementalism is the recent history of the federal Animal Welfare Act, which has been mentioned in passing at this conference, but which so far we've not really focused on. Let me give you a brief history of the Animal Welfare Act and a couple of recent examples of incrementalism and exploitation of opportunities at work.

The federal legislation which is now known as the Animal Welfare Act (http://www.aphis.usda.gov/ac/publications.html) began life on August 24, 1966, as the Laboratory Animal Protection Act. Prior to that, the regulation of animal welfare was considered the province of states and local jurisdictions. However, after a campaign of sensationalized exposes of alleged animal abuses in medical research laboratories (about which we now have reason to be highly skeptical), Congress was persuaded that states and local jurisdictions were not up to the task of imposing humane standards on research laboratories, and decided to make this a federal responsibility. Part of the argument for federal legislation also was that federal research facilities, and facilities conducting research using federal funds, were alleged to be a large part of the problem, ergo the federal government had a responsibility to regulate them.

After enactment of the Laboratory Animal Protection Act in 1966, significant amendments to the Act were made in 1970, 1976, 1985, and 1990 along with less comprehensive amendments on several other occasions. By 1990, legislation that had started life as the Laboratory Animal Protection Act – to regulate the treatment of animals in research facilities – also regulated animals in zoos, aquariums, animal exhibitions such as circuses, the transport of animals by common carriers, handling and sale of animals at auctions, and breeders who sell dogs and cats at wholesale for use as pets or for hunting, breeding and security purposes. It had also been insidiously renamed the Animal Welfare Act.

In addition to the many amendments to the Act actually enacted, there have been many additional unsuccessful attempts in Congress and the courts to expand coverage of the Act, both with respect to the activities regulated and with respect to the species covered. (Significantly, the Act does not regulate agricultural animals.) Barely a year goes by that Congress does not have before it several proposed amendments to the Animal Welfare Act. For example, in just the last few years litigation has been undertaken to bring under the Act persons who breed and sell dogs and cats at retail from their residences, who are currently exempted from coverage, and rats, mice and birds, which are also currently not covered. Coverage of rats, mice and birds was also proposed in Congressional legislation, as was legislation to require airlines which carry animals to retrofit cargo holds, and legislation to require the federal government to regulate the age and frequency of breeding of dogs and the socialization of puppies. Both the addition of rats, mice and birds and the regulation of breeding and socialization of dogs became major issues of controversy in the 2002 Farm Bill.

The legislation to require federal regulation of the breeding and socialization of puppies is an excellent example both of incrementalism and the hypocrisy of the animal rights movement. The legislation, artfully titled the Puppy Protection Act, was introduced in both the Senate and House in the last Congress at the behest of the HSUS. The legislation has been reintroduced in the House in the current Congress, and is currently pending.

This year, the HSUS's PPA campaign is being spearheaded by John Goodwin, a recent addition to the HSUS's executive staff. Mr. Goodwin's animal rights credentials are impeccable. This is the same John Goodwin who founded the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade and advocated animal releases and arson to drive fur farmers out of business. He pled guilty to vandalizing fur stores in 1993 and spent two years under house arrest. After his release, he used the rest of the decade to encourage activists to use theft, vandalism, and fire against furriers and mink ranchers. In 2000, he decided to switch to politics to further his animal rights agenda. HSUS hired him in 2001, giving him access to its $100 million treasury to achieve his goal for 'the abolition of all animal agriculture.' Sounds like a real animal advocate!

The HSUS argues that the PPA is needed to address the problems created by 'puppy mills.' The HSUS argued vehemently to Congress, and, in a cynical attempt to pit hobby and show breeders against commercial breeders, also argued to the purebred dog fancy that the Puppy Protection Act was not intended to regulate hobby and show breeders, but just those bad puppy mills. The truth, of course, is that the HSUS has a longstanding and well documented history of opposing all purposeful breeding of dogs, and especially purebred dogs, by all breeders. The HSUS makes no distinction between hobby and show breeders and commercial breeders. In the HSUS's view, there is no such thing as good breeders or responsible breeders. To them, purposeful breeding is by its very nature bad and irresponsible, and every breeder is a puppy mill.